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Sonic Speak

Date: 10-Nov-2016/9:56+3:00

Tags: ,

Characters: woman in white, me, her, screen, man

I was in a dream and flying through a neighborhood street, somehow... moving through it rapidly. I had a feeling that I could speak without talking, and that I could call out to people. Then something popped up in my field of view, like a web browser on something called "sonicspeak.org".
It was a kind of bulletin board for people who could speak or hear some high frequency. There were posts from people saying things like "whoever is screaming on the block near the intersection of X and Y please stop".
I landed and was sort of excited about this, and told people around me about this site. The thing that interested me most about it was that I felt that the reason I could pick up the site itself was because it was carried on this frequency--so only those who could speak or hear it in the first place would be aware of it.
This dream faded and I found myself at a computer terminal of some type, so I typed in "sonicspeak.org". When I did, it loaded up a webpage but was killed by some popup blocker. So I went back and typed it again, this type pressing the stop loading button before it could go to completion.
Browsing what was on it, it seemed to be an archival site from a web forum. It was an index of links, each link to some thread that the curator believed to be important. Some of these links were bolded as if they were particularly notable. Each thread had a list of the short, one-word handles of the people who were involved in the conversation.
I was scrolling a bit through the list but it seemed like I was hearing a woman narrating things like the purpose of the bolding, and I didn't have control to click through to any of them.
My perspective shifted to where I was part of a crowd in a small space, where there was a speech being given about wanting to keep something running but not knowing how long the space would be made available to them (the building was referred to as something like "The Art Center").
There were people surrounding me, but on one side of me was a desk of some sort. It had raised sides, but I could look over it and see what was on it. I leaned in to try and read the labels on some of the binders, when a woman next to me wearing a white skirt and white jacket spoke to me.
woman in white: "This is a place for aliens...and it's good to have a genius arrive."
me: (mockingly) "How would you know I'm a genius? The particular way in which I lean to the right and look down?"
She seemed to ignore my question, and reached out to embrace me.
woman in white: "I always knew you could meet someone the first time and know you were in love with them. But when I was younger, I never thought it was that relevant. Now I know it is."
Because I was leaning over the desk funny, I had to shift myself, and as I did I reached my arm around her back. In doing so I got a rough gauge on her body type. She seemed to be okay with the embrace and I walked us away from the group.
me: "I got here from looking up a site called 'sonicspeak.org'. I saw that in another dream, or maybe... it could have been 'ultrasonicspeak.org'. Something like that. What year is this?"
She didn't seem to understand the question.
me: "What calendar year is it? Like, what year do they tell you it is?"
her: "1972"
me: "Well that's going to make it hard to find me, I'm not born yet. I'm from 2015 and I'm 35."
I stopped and double-checked my statement.
me: "No, that was wrong, I'm 40. Well, to the extent the years have any meaning. I don't know. But we can pretend they do, if so look and see if you can find my father..."
I picked up an envelope off a nightstand and thought to write on the back, but it had some printing on it. So I picked up what looked more like post-its and wrote information about my father's name and place of work (he wouldn't have worked there in 1972).
The environment faded and I found myself what I thought was awake, using my current computer (a Microsoft Surface Book). I went to look up "sonicspeak.org" again, but this time a strange page with a green background that said "OS X" in a large helvetica font at the top came up.
I gathered that this time, it was advertising "sonic speak" was some kind of software program. But as I tried to scroll down it seemed there was a lot of vertical blank green space on the page...with lists of names and icons, forums and discussion groups on the side.
But at one point while looking at the screen it just said "HOW DID YOU GET HERE?" Feeling a little Twilight-Zone-like, I talked back to the screen.
me: "Who, me?"
screen: (printed) "YES, YOU."
me: "Well, I was in this one dream a couple dreams ago and I saw this 'sonicspeak.org' website, which was about people who could communicate through some kind of ultrasound or something. I looked it up in the next dream and asked what year it was and a girl said 1972, and I said I was from 2015. What year is this?"
An older man seemed to materialize in the room next to the bed where I was typing. The room had a dark greenish tone, and there was nothing there but the bed and a large curtain.
man: "Well, it's 60 years past that here."
I held up the Surface Book.
me: "60 years and you still have Surface Books? Hasn't there been some kind of AI singularity or something?"
The man walked over to the curtain, to pull it aside, but didn't do so yet.
man: "Yep. Want to see something?"
me: "Well, don't like...freak me out. But otherwise, sure."
He pointed to the sheet I had kind of wrapped around my shoulders.
man: "Get that off you and come over here."
I dropped the sheet and walked to the window, which he opened. It was dark outside but there was a well lit array of very plastic-y looking and arranged things, next to a building that had brightly colored logos on it that seemed a bit to go with the Android/Nexus branding.
At first I couldn't quite focus on what I was seeing, but when I looked more closely I could see some machines that were about the size of forklifts filing and un-filing chairs. They seemed to be able to build and tear down some kind of office conference room rather quickly.
man: (cryptically) "Atta girl..."
My point of view shifted out of this to yet another scene, again looking up "sonicspeak.org". This time I hit a fairly small-seeming but well-illustrated website, that seemed to be about someone's specific identity like ("Mr. So and So's House of Amusements"). It didn't have a lot of buttons to click, but it seemed each button I did click opened up another page with more buttons.
Somehow I landed in a page with a button to click that was Mr. Whoever's spelling tests. I don't know in particular why I clicked it, but I did. There were objects and labels, and it seemed like you had to type in the labels as they were written...so it wasn't as much a spelling test as it was a typing test.
I couldn't see my fingers and didn't know exactly how the letters were getting in, and the font was tiny. As I went through the process it seemed like the 2D website turned into a 3D experience where I was actually interacting with little objects--the sizes of collectible cottages or something--on a shelf, with illuminated orange LED writing on them. I don't remember many of the words, but it seemed they ended with two fir trees where I had to type FIR FIR, and then I got confused which shelf I needed to type on next.
Part of me had the perception this was some kind of CAPTCHA test, and so I took it somewhat seriously trying to get the words right...backspacing to enter them correctly.
A window seemed to pop up and float over the 3D environment saying "analyzing how input was entered..." and it had a progress bar that seemed to sit there for a long time. Eventually it said something like "can't determine".
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The accounts written here are as true as I can manage. While the words are my own, they are not independent creative works of fiction —in any intentional way. Thus I do not consider the material to be protected by anything, other than that you'd have to be crazy to want to try and use it for genuine purposes (much less disingenuous ones!) But who's to say?